Coming inamongus by hundreds and thousands, as they now are and for years have been, their gentler and fiercerpassions, likemeadowrivulets and mountaintorrents, mixing in with and modifying our own, and their art, science and literature, their hardhandedness and willingheartedness, and their experiences of lifegenerally, giving to and receiving from ours newimpulses and newdirections, the wholesoonflowtogether in one commonstream of Humanity, which will be foundirresistible by any barriers that mayoppose its course, and inevitablygivenew and peculiaraspects to the region and the erawherein it holds its way.

America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richerparts of the emergingworld $4 a day is the povertybarrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercestbelow $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): peoplebelow that levellivelives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.